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I had only just finished my post Is Yelp a waste of time and doomed to failure when I went to check on Yelp’s own review page about itself. As usual I expected to see lots of grumbling from reviewers that their reviews had been filtered and lots of grumbling from business owners that positive reviews had been filtered after they turned down Yelp’s sales team (an accusation by the way, not proved ﾅ yet!).

Like many in the SEO world I’ve been watching Yelp’s progress over the years. So far it has burnt its way through more than $100 million and is still failing to make any profit. Some even suggest that the current business model makes profit almost impossible. Although they recently posted 69% growth in revenue most of this seems to be coming from global expansion. They grow larger, but it is the same loss making business simply on a bigger scale, driven on by venture capitalists who hope one day someone will figure out how it could actually turn a profit.

Oh so many people spend a great deal of time fretting over having a keyword density of 4% or 6%. Is it enough? Is it too much and they’ll get penalised? And advice on the internet is pretty hazy because the SEO community seems divided between those who feel it is of no importance at all and those, including me, who can see it still plays a part.